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How the U.S. Empire’s Media Distort the Reality of Putin and of Russia

3 November 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

A neoconservative (i.e., pro-U.S.-empire) acquaintance sent me something from the imperialist propaganda-organ The Economist, on November 1st,

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DfQA6EpFbvH/?vrfl=NHR1YmtrdjFiZjhu

For nearly five years of Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine,

Novaya Gazeta has reported from inside Russia.

But no more.

Russia's most enduring independent newspaper

has been evicted from its building,

all its finances blocked,

and it's now over.

From the start of the invasion,

the Kremlin imposed a de facto military censorship.

It banned the word war and forced most independent journalists to leave the country.

Two thirds of Novaya Gazeta staff also left.

But Dmitriy Muratov, a co-founder of the paper and a team of some 30 journalists, stayed put.

They couldn't report on the war itself, so they reported on its consequences in Russia.

Isolation, repressions, psychological trauma.

They also provided comfort and dignity to those who opposed the war but didn't want to leave Russia.

As you can see, we don't cry on this, but we understand that it's much harder for people there.

There were only thousands of children in Ukraine who died.

To talk about our true tragedy, it seems impossible to say.

Except that it is appropriate, because the war against Ukraine is also an assault on Russian society.

And the New York Times had been holding the home front.

We understood that as soon as people's rights of people are being destroyed,

when all institutions are destroyed and people are being smoke,

then the expansion will gradually turn to what is behind our country.

From the moment that Putin came to power,

the newspaper has been exposing the violence of the state against its own people.

Over the years, six of its own journalists have been killed.

The most renowned was Anna Politkovskaya. [Here’s what’s known about that killing.]

She was gunned down as she was entering her apartment block on October 7th, 2006.

After her murder, Muratov considered closing the paper, but his staff persuaded him to keep

going.

We said, no, you're the chief editor, we're very close to you, but no.

We continue to work, this is our choice.

But this time, the choice has been made for them.

After the paper has been effectively declared an enemy of the state,

its officers raided, its editor and chief detained,

it was clear that carrying on meant going to jail.

But Muratov insists they will continue with their duties.

This is our city. We destroyed our city.

We leave it from it, but we absolutely don't leave this work.

I replied:

Thanks. I looked online for other news-reports about that. I found in the NYT on October 31st “Novaya Gazeta, Fiercely Independent Russian News Outlet, Says It Will Shut Down. Journalists at Novaya Gazeta, whose co-founder received the Nobel Peace Prize, said the government had orchestrated its demise: “They killed us.”” I included from that NYT report:

Novaya Gazeta had been forced to stop printing newspapers in March 2022, when the government canceled its “mass media” license. But it continued to publish online, and it published news magazines with smaller circulations.

Mr. Muratov, 65, has said that he stayed in Russia because he believed the press was the last democratic institution left in the country.

“The media has taken the function of the Parliament,” he told me in an interview early this year in his Moscow office, using the politics of the war as an illustration. “Eighty percent of Russians favor a cease-fire,” he said, citing polls. “But in a Parliament of 450 deputies, not a single one represents that position. So it is expressed today by the media.”

The statement on Friday reflected another point that Mr. Muratov made, during an interview with me last month. He compared Russia’s present with the Stalinist “Great Terror” of the late 1930s, when hundreds of thousands of people deemed state enemies were killed and even more were sent to forced labor camps.

“Stop saying this isn’t Stalin’s 1937, and that the repressions are somehow ‘digital.’ These are state repressions. And it’s people, not numbers, who are dying in cells,” the journalists said in their statement, referring to the 69 Russian and Ukrainian political prisoners who have died in custody since the Ukraine war started, according to a report by the banned human rights group Memorial.

So, I was very struck by Muratov’s allegation that “Eighty percent of Russians favor a cease-fire,” which shocked me, because the only beneficiary of a ceasefire would be Ukraine’s government, which could then bring in from NATO the armaments that can’t successfully be brought in while Russia is bombing Ukraine’s supply lines. It would be stupid for Russia to do that. I wondered “Are the Russian people THAT stupid?” Muratove is, but are the Russians GENERALLY? If so, then Russia’s media have been doing a horrible job.

So, I asked ChatGPT “Have Russians been polled on their support for a ceasefire in the Ukraine war?” and it answered:

1. Direct polling on a ceasefire

Poll and date	Question or proposal	Support	Opposition
Levada, March 2025	30-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine	50%	41%
ExtremeScan, September 2025	Stop fighting by fixing the border at the existing front line	57%	19%
ExtremeScan, 2025–2026	Ceasefire through mutual concessions	64–65%	Not specified
Levada, September 2026	Putin decides to end the conflict immediately, without additional conditions	81%	12%
Levada, September 2026	Putin ends the conflict but returns annexed territories to Ukraine	35%	51%

Sources: 

Levada Center+2

The most important distinction is that 81% supported an immediate end to the conflict when proposed by Putin, but this does not establish that 81% would accept an unconditional bilateral ceasefire independently of his decision.

In other words: “The most important distinction is that 81% supported an immediate end to the conflict when proposed by Putin, but this does not establish that 81% would accept an unconditional bilateral ceasefire independently of his decision.” In other words: IF Putin accepts a ceasefire, THEN 81% of Russians will. Furthermore, 35% of Russians would support Putin if he ends the conflict and returns annexed territories to Ukraine; 51% of Russians would reject Putin if he does that. Ukraine’s Zelensky has CONSISTENTLY refused to accept ANY end to the war UNLESS ALL of the former Ukrainian territories are returned to Ukraine. Consequently, what all of this means is that 35% of Russians will accept, and 51% of Russians will refuse to accept, a Ukrainian victory in this war.

I therefore conclude that Muratov’s statement “‘Eighty percent of Russians favor a cease-fire,’ he said, citing polls.” was a lie by him. The pollings show nothing of the sort that he claims — quite the contrary.

I don’t see anything admirable in Muratov; to the exact opposite, he is a traitor to his country, just as were any Soviet citizens who favored a defeat of the Soviet Union by the Nazis in WW2. A U.S. win in Ukraine would be disastrous for the national security of the Russian people. Maybe Muratov is stupid enough to fail even to recognize that the U.S. is today’s Nazi imperialist regime and that Ukraine since 2014 has been this U.S.-nazi regime’s beach-head in its war since 1945 to conquer Russia using Ukraine for that purpose. Otherwise, Muratov is a conscious and duplicitous nazi himself — an outright supporter of U.S. nazism.

So, I then asked ChatGPT “Did the Russian Novaya Gazeta receive U.S. (or allied) funding?” and it answered:

Yes. There is documented evidence that Novaya Gazeta received funding from foreign organizations, including American and European sources. However, we must distinguish the original Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, from Novaya Gazeta Europe, established in Latvia in April 2022.

The evidence is particularly strong for the European successor publication.

1. Original Novaya Gazeta (Russia, founded 1993)

In April 2016, Meduza reported that Russian authorities were investigating foreign grants received by Novaya Gazeta.

According to the report, the newspaper's 2012–2013 tax returns showed that it had received $326,000 from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to support investigative journalism in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Source: Meduza, April 6, 2016. 

Meduza

This is evidence of American-linked foreign funding, although it does not by itself establish that the $326,000 originated with the U.S. Government.

2. Novaya Gazeta Europe (founded 2022)

Here the evidence is more extensive.

Date	Funding source	Evidence
April 2022	JX Fund, established by Reporters Without Borders and German foundations	Novaya Gazeta Europe was among its first beneficiaries.
2022 onward	German government and private foundations	The German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media was among the JX Fund's original supporters.
March 2025	Foundation for Democracy and Liberal Values, a U.S.-based nonprofit	Novaya Gazeta Europe publicly announced receiving a grant.

Sources: 

RSF

+1

The original announcement from Reporters Without Borders is particularly important:

RSF, April 14, 2022: Launch of the JX Fund.

It identifies both Novaya Gazeta Europe as a beneficiary and a German federal government institution among the fund's supporters. This establishes a funding connection, although it does not establish the precise amount of German government money ultimately reaching the newspaper.

3. How much money did it receive?

On September 4, 2026, Russian media reported an RT investigation claiming that Novaya Gazeta Europe received approximately €6.4 million between 2022 and 2024, from American and European sources.

Source: NEWS.ru, September 4, 2026. 

News.ru

However, I have not independently verified this €6.4 million figure against the newspaper's financial statements or the underlying grant records. It should therefore be attributed to RT rather than presented as an established accounting fact.

4. Was it funded by USAID or the National Endowment for Democracy?

This distinction matters.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) acknowledges that it receives annual funding appropriated by the U.S. Congress through the State Department.

Source: NED's official explanation of its financing. 

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

Russian reporting identifies NED and the European Endowment for Democracy as important funders of Russian opposition media generally. However, I have not yet established a specific, documented NED or USAID grant to either Novaya Gazeta publication.

On 4 September, 2026, after Novaya Gazeta’s established record of receiving U.S.-and-allied funding and promoting to Russians the U.S. imperial line favoring Ukraine, Russia’s Ministry of Justice officially designated the original Russian Novaya Gazeta a foreign agent and entered it into the government's foreign-agent register.

Today I went to the website of Novaya Gazeta, and found this, which is autotranslated by Google as this. At the top of it is a banner, “18+. THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) WAS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED AND (OR) SENT BY A FOREIGN AGENT, THE INTERNET PUBLICATION ‘NOVAYA GAZETA’, OR CONCERNING THE ACTIVITIES OF A FOREIGN AGENT.”

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.